Investing

Bonds don’t have to be boring. Just like you can split up stocks into different categories, we can do the same thing with bonds. And by doing this, it can tell us a great deal about our investments and how we are invested. Here are the main sub-asset classes when it comes to bonds: Good…

Can you pass this pop quiz? Knowing what you know right now, what would be the most volatile and potentially risky asset class of these: large U.S. or small U.S.? Yes, small U.S. because the smaller the company is, the more risky it usually is. Okay, a little harder now. Large developed or large emerging…

In the last lesson, you learned that geography is an important distinction. Are there are any categories that might be important? Let’s look at U.S. stocks. We know these are different and may perform differently from developed international stocks and emerging market stocks. But do you think there is much of a difference between a…

We’ve spent a lot of time on stocks because, as an investor, it will be one of the main types of investments in your portfolio. And I’ve said that stocks are a main asset class, which means stocks generally share many characteristics and tend to behave similarly. Not All Stocks Are Created Equally All of…

As an investor, you’re bound to hear a lot about asset classes. This is one of those key areas in which you’ll want some level of understanding. In other words, you would definitely not be money smart if you didn’t know about asset classes. So let’s jump in. An asset class is just a fancy…

Why does the stock market go up and down? Well, the stock market has been likened to a teenage girl because of its erratic moods and volatility. But that’s not really a fair thing to say about teenage girls. Their mood swings are not as bad as the stock market. So what causes this up…

Which style of investing performs better? Active or passive? About 86% of active large cap managers beat their index in 2014. Only 86%. That means 14% of these higher cost ADHD OCD managers didn’t even do as well as their index. Oops, wait! I made a tiny mistake. I didn’t mean to suggest that only…

Here’s a little story. It’s a story of two seemingly different brothers who share a common job. Cornelius was a rather astute and precocious child. He was a hard worker. Very analytical and Type A. He had to be right, so he spent hours and hours in his room researching and learning. He got a…

Imagine you are an apple farmer, and you have a bunch of acres and thousands of apple trees. Side note, have you had a Honeycrisp apple?! These things are amazing. I should know; I’m from Washington State, the land of angst-filled musicians, rain, and apples. In your apple orchard, you have different types of apple…

You may hear news commentators say, “The action on Wall Street today was strong, blah, blah, blah.” What do they mean by Wall Street? Wall Street refers to the financial and investment community. In fact, there was a movie way back in the 1980s called Wall Street, and it was about the stock market (side…